


good grief

by Anonymous



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, Childhood Sweethearts, Implied Murder, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Summer Love, Their morals are Grey at the Lighest, Welcome to: unhinged and sexy nahyuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:28:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22820236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: this is how to play godarchive of our own user boyeater reviewed this as a 'dream-sized horror story packaged in a candy bag'
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Na Jaemin
Comments: 16
Kudos: 52
Collections: Anonymous, all the fics i've ever read ♡





	good grief

**Author's Note:**

  * For [haesuns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/haesuns/gifts), [boyeater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boyeater/gifts), [incendiarism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/incendiarism/gifts).



> mandu and sol invited me to join them and ash on their sexy unhinged nahyuck endeavors (and subsequent domination of the nahyuck tag) and so, i encroach with this. 
> 
> i wrote this in fifty four minutes and spent a good half of that time making moodboards on pinterest so please do not expect anything great.
> 
> [A PLAYLIST HERE](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7FljmmBLmjhs55EWf0IodA?si=AO9fvQBFRsOs-L7mjT_Pvw) (endless summer, murder towns, boys in love, all those edgy vibes uwu)

Donghyuck sits in a graveyard. Waits for the rest of his life. Not a chance, a moment, but a person—

Jaemin, effervescent and bright, teeth glaring in the neon street lights. Sharp wits, sharper eyes. Claws for nails. Tempered steel, candy shell. He’s not the same boy Donghyuck grew up with, but Donghyuck’s not the same boy either. Time does that. Clocks are ticking.

Swim out to your ship, some will say. Swim out to meet it. But it’s a fool’s advice, a sinking ship will only drag you down with it. Meeting boats is a dangerous venture.

Donghyuck has spent too much of his life trying to live to give that up now.

And so, he sits in the graveyard. Ignores the rain dripping down his cheeks, through his hair. Molten caramel. Ignores the graveyard in his heart, bones towering up high. Life is a waiting game. And if anything, that’s something Donghyuck knows how to win.

_Tick. Tock._

This is how it begins:

A summer, a lake, two boys running down a hill, hand’s clasped furiously. They laugh and the birds laugh back. Immortal. The grass moves around them, the wind makes way. The world watches them love, and grin, and be, and the world offers protection. Gentle hands. A guidance. The summer, the summer, they are boys of the summer. Alight with more than life. They flourish.

An impossible summer.

This is how to play god.

> 1) Love your boy.

Love him with every part of your soul. Donghyuck grows up in the same town as him, in the same class. Watches him adoringly. Smiles at him, the boy from the sweetshop. That’s why you originally wanted to be friends, when you were young and unable to recognise how Jaemin was so much more than strawberry truffles.

Friendship was something that grew tentatively between the two of them, and then all at once, all-engulfing. Donghyuck’s older now, and he loves him more. The most. It’s possessive, but not cruel. Kiss his sugar-stained lips, hold his marshmallow heart. Burn it.

You hold hands, and run across parking lots, illegal cigarettes tucked underneath your jacket. You smoke them, outside the church, because you’re sixteen and cool and it’s the only place in this godforsaken town where nobody’s going to see you. It’s sacrilegious, blasphemous, everything your father ever told you not to be.

Your father is not here, however, he lives far away. In a different universe, another snapshot from time. Right now, you and Jaemin are the only people in the world. His breath tastes like nicotine and peppermint and his laughter is syrup warm. Lips lock. You are in love.

That’s step one, loving him. And it’s the easiest things that come first.

> 2) Consider your place in the universe.

Donghyuck’s father has the skin of a black mamba stretched above the wall over their television. Welcome to the twenty first century, where mantelpieces are obsolete but the decorations that surround them still remain. Tiny temples, for trinket’s sake.

Black mambas are one of the deadliest snakes in the world. Also, the fastest. Somewhere, growing up with broken dishware and rosary beads, and the unwelcoming knowledge that you are lonely, the snake became more of a role model than the father himself.

_Strike._

Church on Sundays, and Saturdays too. Gardening after school on weekdays. Handing out leaflets for homeless charities, or primary school fundraisers. _What a good boy you’ve raised_.

His father accepts the compliments with a smile more delicate than baby’s breath. Oddly enough, no one ever seems to care. 

Donghyuck has a burn scar that runs down the entirety of his left thigh. It hurts sometimes, still, if he moves too fast. Skin pulled taught. Tight sugar taffy. Crank the tension, he’s that close to snapping.

It was Jaemin who slew vinegar over it, pungent, the smell clouding the small utility room. Thick in the both of their throats. Vinegar and honey, draw out the heat. Donghyuck’s never had it treated properly, and maybe that’s why it still pains him now. Or maybe it’s because that’s how things should hurt. A reminder. The casual acknowledgement of mortality. Checkmark.

Donghyuck had stayed in Jaemin’s family’s utility room for days after that. Going home was not something on the table. Or off the table. Or, on any surface you might find.

> 3) Reprise (This is love)

My dearest, you must have courage. Jaemin speaks like an old movie character, that is his latest phase. He picks up characters like cloaks, trying endlessly to find a skin that fits. Donghyuck, a snake himself, says nothing. Silently supports Jaemin, and the never-ending question of how to map oblivion. He, however, has long decided what kind of skin look best on Jaemin.

Jaemin tilts his head, smirks. “Hyuck. I have something to show you.”

Welcome to the summer. It’s not the same summer you grew up in, but nothing’s ever the same. You’ve been away from a long, long time.

Donghyuck watches Jaemin lollop ahead. He’s changed. Soft skin has been toasted; eyes have become hard. The ring finger on his left hand is at a strange angle, a break that grew back wrong. His hair is pink, candy-cotton soft. It’s hot and Donghyuck tells him that.

“Thank you,” Jaemin smiles, lips curling. It seems more deadly than it ever did before.

The path Jaemin leads Donghyuck down is sticky and hot, and it curves suddenly and Donghyuck’s looking over the house he grew up in. It’s a place he’s not visited for years. The memory has long become a mirage.

“I have a present for you,” Jaemin smiles and this—this is his old smile. This is the boy you fell in love with, this is the boy you continue to love. Love more, if more is possible.

Blood is hard to scrub out of floorboards. It’s something that you consider, before the climax. You don’t, however, any give it more thought than that. Hindsight is a cruel place to be living.

There is blood on your hands, and blood on the hands of the boy you love. And blood all over the floor.

Jaemin loves you most, you are certain of that. And it’s not possible for you to love him any more but somehow, somehow you manage.

Keep on giving.

> 4) Swift march to martyrdom

_That poor boy_

Townspeople can only ever talk about him, not too him. Donghyuck has never been a person in their eyes, not before and certainly not after.

Jaemin cackles, every time they overhear whatever white woman’s words of pity. And they hear them a lot. _Poor boy, growing up without a family._

“You’re my family,” Donghyuck had said, under a bridge once. In the moonlight, by the lake they swam in as children. Hands significantly rougher, harder, harsher than they were then, grabbing and clutching and squeezing. Snakes.

Jaemin had grinned. “Of course.” The veins on his wrists were bright blue visible, matching the bruises down his neck. Black mambas are one of the most venomous snakes in the world. They hardly, however, attack each other.

_That poor boy_

Donghyuck, does not feel poor. He is a king, a knight, an emperor. Some CEO of a company, designer products worked over by slaves. Donghyuck is the richest man alive. More than a man, surely.

Humans are not capable of being this much. And that is blasphemy, an insult of the highest kind but Donghyuck’s father is not here to see it. Jaemin is, for now at least, and he laughs triumphantly.

The world has given Donghyuck many hurts, but the world has given him Jaemin. And that is the greatest blessing of all.

But boys cannot live in the sun forever. Tick, tock.

This is how it ends:

Autumn, metaphorically and physically. A graveyard. The rain. Waiting.

Waiting, waiting, waiting. He waits, he waits, he waits. His jumper is ruined, his shoes are mud covered. But mud washes easier than blood, and Donghyuck’s an old pro at the latter by now.

Can you call something lost when it was you who flung it away? Two mirror images, the opposite sides of a coin. Shatter. Luk chup. Ruin a portrait, destroy a painting. And then: build yourself up. From tarmac and dust and rotting bones. Stitch, stitch. It’s time to get to work again, Prometheus.

There’s something incredibly powerful watching gods come out to play.

**Author's Note:**

> This is,, gratuitous self-interest(?) for myself. I literally just wrote about all my fave things (summer, nahyuck, snakes, confectionary, horror) and put a ff coloured bow on top. write what u want to read i guess? Or: write what u want to do (minus the murder, im not so hot on that)
> 
> "My dearest, you must have courage" is a bastardised cs lewis quote (courage, dear heart)  
> the bit about vinegar was inspired from my friend bobby uwu
> 
> please leave ur thoughts i would! eat a slug to hear them xo


End file.
